Why are some European cities cycling mad? And how can other cities copy their infrastructure? ECF spoke to Kalle Vaismaa, co-author of the book “Best European Practices in Promoting Cycling and Walking”. (Article source: European Cyclists’ Federation ECF)

Best European Practices in Promoting Cycling And WalkinG

Working for the Transport Research Centre at the Tampere University of Technology, Kalle Vaismaa spent more than two years researching the best cycle infrastructure that Europe has to offer and compiling it into a 269 page book packed full of colour photos and diagrams.

“We originally published the book in Finnish,” explains Vaismaa, “but then we realized there was a huge demand for it in Europe and now it has been translated into English.”

It’s easy to see why people were eager to get their hands on this gem. The book looks at some of Europe’s most famous cycling cities with insight into cycling greats such as Groningen, Strasbourg, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. And it comes as no surprise as to which countries do cycling infrastructure best.

I feel really quite awful when I see a valuable, a much needed public resource like this priced at something on the order of one hundred dollars. Now I am sure that there are a thousand explanations for it, but at the end of the day it seems so important that a much-needed book of this relevance should get very wide distribution. With all the public (i.e., taxpayers) money that has gone into this project, it seems like an oversight that these great materials should be caught into such a tight corner of our merciless mercantile economy. Any ideas on how to change this?